Laurie Anderson is back with Amelia, her first album since 2018’s Grammy-winning Landfall. It’s a powerful return for one of America’s most daring avant-garde artists, this time channeling the haunting story of famed aviator Amelia Earhart’s final flight. Over 22 tracks, Anderson doesn’t just narrate Earhart’s tragic disappearance, she comes up with a subjective, almost dreamlike journey that blurs the line between history and imagination. Anderson, who recently received the 2024 Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, has always been known for her ability to look beyond the surface. This attentiveness is evident throughout Amelia, where she mines Earhart’s pilot diaries, telegrams to her husband, and her own introspective musings on what it might have felt like for a woman trying to circumnavigate the globe.

The album is a work of epic proportions, featuring contributions from a star-studded lineup, including the Czech orchestra Filharmonie Brno, conducted by Dennis Russell Davies, plus Anohni, Marc Ribot, and Nadia Sirota. The result is a sweeping, orchestral soundscape that mixes with Anderson’s signature spoken-word and electronic elements, creating a sound as complex and elusive as Earhart herself. Anderson’s fascination with the Earhart is hardly surprising. The aviator was a pioneer in her own right, the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic in 1932. But it was her ill-fated attempt to fly around the world in 1937 that sealed her legend. Earhart’s plane vanished over the Pacific Ocean, and despite countless searches and theories, her remains and those of her aircraft have never been found.

“I wanted to imagine what it was like to be up there, flying over endless water, facing the limits of your courage and endurance,” Anderson explains. “The words in Amelia come from her pilot diaries, her telegrams, and my idea of what she might have thought and felt in those final moments.”

Originally premiered at Carnegie Hall in 2000, Amelia has been reworked and performed across Europe in recent years, each performance a further refinement of Anderson’s vision, and the album brings the piece to life in a new way. With a career spanning over three decades, Anderson has never been one to take the easy route. From her groundbreaking 1980 hit “O Superman” to her multimedia performances, she’s continually pushed the boundaries of what the mixture of music and art can be. Amelia is a powerful addition to her legacy, a haunting meditation on a woman who, like Anderson herself, refused to be confined by the limitations of her time.